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Mac Pro 1,1 Yosemite Install

Having let the dust settle a little from the initial release of OS X Yosemite, I decided to take the plunge and see if I could coax it on to my Mac Pro 1,1. As many of you will know the original 2006 Intel powered Mac Pro does not sport the required 64bit EFI to allow either Mavericks or Yosemite to install via the usual method.

You can read all about the method I used to install Mavericks despite this limitation in this previous post:- Mac Pro 1,1 and Mavericks. Using almost the same method as outlined in that post I have a working installation of Yosemite.

There were only two things that I did differently. Firstly, instead of installing on to a newly formatted SSD I decided to try the upgrade route and install on to my existing drive thus preserving all of my installed applications. Secondly I used Pike’s new boot.efi, (thank you to commenter Ralph Sampson for pointing me in the right direction) as I believe Tiamo’s existing version will not work. More details and latest version here.

The install itself went smoothly and early tests indicate that everything appears to be working with the exception of Facetime which was also broken for me under Mavericks. Not a huge issue, I may get around to calling customer support as prompted by the pop up window if I feel the need to see if it can be resolved. I have experienced a few graphical glitches whilst using Lightroom 4. I’m not sure if this is specific to Lightroom or a wider issue. I’ll report back in due course.

(Update 18/11/14)

Installed the 10.10.1 update with no apparent problems. I’ve resolved the graphic glitches for now by selecting ‘Reduce transparency’ in the Accessibility settings. I’ve also been experiencing random wakes from sleep (wake for ethernet access is not enabled) along with the SSD that I have installed on a card in a PCI slot being randomly ejected.

One other problem that I have which I believe is more likely to be related to some new RAM that I’ve installed is the fans spinning up much higher than usual on wake from sleep. I decided to try some cheaper RAM without the Apple approved heatsinks to bring the total system memory up to 26 GB.

I was instructed to read this page, when I asked for help about my Mac Pro 1.1 running Mavericks. It seems that with either 10.9.3 or 10.9.5, the system recognizes only 8 MB of memory from the 512 MB my NVidia Quadro FX 4500 has. You seem to be very experienced in these issues, so any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Hi John, I can only recommend that you swap to a supported graphics adapter. With hacks like these certain problems are bound to arise with certain hardware combinations. I would suggest a Mac Edition ATI Radeon 5770 or similar.

I had converted my Mac Pro 1,1 up to Mavericks and followed the updates to their conclusion at 10.9.4. No difficulties. Back then I used the method of removing all the HDs from the Mac Pro but one, targeted that drive from a compliant Mac Book Pro running Mavericks and arrived at Mavericks on the Mac Pro on that drive, returning the other drives as well once OS was proven. So when Yosemite came out in GM and after the smoke cleared, I used the most recent form of Piker-Alpha boot file, a thumb drive and Hennesie2000’s excellent guide, that Mr. Zarniwwop had pointed out here:

The approach worked well, took some time of course loading, and I have been running it for a couple of weeks without any problems. I have full use of my computer and OS. I recommend doing this without reservation to your old Mac Pro. Critical to have updated GPU or course.

You have not indicated the GPU; it is critical though. ATI Radeon HD 5870 or 5770 or equal will work, for example. This is what I have been running for years on my 1,1, even before doing the hack-around.

If you look back into this subject here, you will find info on the CPU requirement and recommendations. In my case, I stepped up to two quad Intel X5365 CPUs and had already mounted them before the hack-around. I think these particular CPUs are the most advanced a 1,1 can operate with. Since you are in the act of preserving your MP for years to come apparently, a CPU upgrade is a very good idea, even if it might not be required to run Yosemite via Pike’s Boot.efi.

Great blog Retrocosm and thanks for all your input.
Peter/Retro – i have the same MacPro 1,1 as Paul mentions above and am trying to go straight to Yosemite. I have ordered and in order will do the following upgrades 1st.
1. CPU to be swapped to MATCHING PAIR INTEL (2) XEON QC Quad Core X5365 (3.00GHZ/8M/1333
2. Video: Apple ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB for the Mac Pro
3. Box already has 16GB ram in it.
4. has the default Sata drives in it. Would like to go to a SSD boot drive. Any suggestions?

Software: i have downloaded Piker-Alpha’s pre-patched Yosemite installer.
My question is – After doing the hardware updates and ensuring things are ‘working’, would i be fine to just go straight to getting the Piker installer onto a new SSD boot drive and then bring up the MacPro (essentially skipping the mavericks step) or would you recommend getting the Hardware + Mavericks Step 1st and then go with the Alpha installer to ‘upgrade’ to Yosemite.
You help is greatly appreciated in advance.

I managed to easily install Yosemite on my MacPro 1,1, by using Piker-Alpha’s pre-patched bootable Yosemite installer:http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=20537556&postcount=2184
“that can be restored to a USB flash drive using Disk Utility (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5848).
This method, a fork of tiamo’s bootloader, uses a replacement native EFI32 boot.efi boot loader that thunks EFI64 calls from the 64-bit OS X kernel to the EFI32 firmware…
Those who want to manually build their own bootable USB flash drive installer can follow the guide to installing Yosemite using the Piker-Alpha boot.efi.
While this method is preferred because it’s a native EFI boot, there is some risk is that installing future Yosemite updates could overwrite Pike’s EFI32 boot.efi if Apple were to update the stock EFI64 boot.efi. This would be unusual, but it has happened in a few previous OS X updates and is now expected to happen again in the 10.10.2 update. If this were to happen, the system would no longer be natively bootable on a 2006/2007 Mac Pro until it had Apple’s stock boot.efi replaced with Pike’s boot.efi again…” (see http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1740775)
It works flawlessly if you replace the standard graphics card (XT 1600 or GT 7300) with an ATI Radeon HD 4870 (like i did) or a 5870 etc.

Great blog, I used your method to install Yosemite on my Mac Pro 1.1, all has been well, until the lastest update on 27th Jan, on reboot it didn’t boot, I ended up re-installing with 64/32 Sfott, all’s well now as long as i don’t apply the update, any fixes out there for this at all?

Using my USB drive set up to install Yosemite via Piker Alpha, I saw the kernel has changed. The file was dated for this download so that means trouble, unless P-A will continue to work and just needs to be reapplied per our method. Or will this mean that Piker-Alpha’s file can’t be reapplied and we need an update to it to get 10.10.2 to run? When I blithely installed 10.10.2 Combo, I was also stopped at my restarting monitor blinking forever in primary colors.

I am trying to re-install again (I still have my previous USB with 10.10.1 for MacPro 1,1, and my Mac does not want to boot from USB anymore, i have tried all possible ways to get it boot from USB it can see it, but when selected to boot from USB, and stops responding. I guess there are more than just an update to 10.10.2. BEWARE!!!

I am running 10.10 its the only version I have that will boot up, I had all day yesterday and tried many ways to get 10.10.2 to boot up, but no joy, I keep a spare HD with a working Yosemite on it, even tried taking the efi boot out of that and into 10.10.2, that doesn’t work, that’s about the end of my knowledge of efi’s.

Right. I have just gone through the same mess too and during the re-do, found the Pike-Alpha
kernel that was running my 10.10.1 & prior, my 10.10, had been modified by the 10.10.2 install. This had not happened in prior updates and we used to be able to use Apple’s updates without further effort.

I think we can apply apple’s 10.10.1 update right to the computer. When 10.10.1 came available, I was able to install .1 on top of .0 via Apple’s installer only, no issues, no special protocol. I will try it soon, but I am too busy with other work and can’t risk being “out of business” at all at the moment.

I understand, I am retired and have all day to sort mine out, I live in Glasgow and the snow is falling so another day to play around with updates. I downloaded 10.10.1 and 10.10.2 updates direct, and I am going to fiddle with the latter later today.

Wow Keith. It is 70 degrees here in Central California. The trees are already getting ready to bud and it’s only January.

Thanks, and do let us know. I think we have to install the Apple 10.10.2 Installer on our bootable drive, but the fact that the kernel was altered when prior updates hadn’t been, does not make me hopeful.

How I wish I was in California now !! its after midnight here and snowing quite heavy, I am supposed to go up to Inverness to take a 2010 MacBook I have refurbed for a friend, took out his old 250 gig HD and cloned it and installed a 1 TB HD and a seperate 1TB HD where the superdrive was and also upped the ram to 8gb. But guess the snow might put a hold on that.

I agree Peter, I bought this off Ebay last year and have upgraded it gradually, I added memory to bump it up 16 gig and quad core 2.66 processors and also flashed it to 2.1, not bad for a near 10 year old machine.. Windows eat your heart out !!!

That is what we are doing and getting complete success under 10.10.2, Cobalt. Don’t worry about .3 yet. It probably will be an issue when we get further along with the OS or the next full new one. Meanwhile, go for it if you are similarly built as we are and not configured in some unique fashion.

Peter/Keith – i have a macpro 1,1 to which i have made the following changes:
-Processor – (Quad Core X5365 (3.00GHZ),
-Memory – 32Gig
-HD
– Added a Apricorn Velocity Solo x-1 Card &
– Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III
-Video : changed to Radeon HD 5870.
My plan is to install Yosemite straight to the SSD and boot from it.
Can you pls. point me to the latest STABLE config that i can configure and have up and running on the SSD
I have backed up the OS already.
I have seen a lot of instructions around the net, but this forum seems to have the most stable set of instructions. However, the latest discussions around 10.10.1 and 10.10.2 etc leads me to believe that its sort of a hit or miss. i don’t have to be on the latest update. i am just trying to get to the latest stable build of Yosemite.

one more clarification. i have this macpro and nothing else. so any setup to do the SSD to Yosemite is something i have to set up 1st and then take the machine down and switch to a SSD based boot (today its a ~500Gb in the macpro with the os @ 10.7.5).

Take a look at this website Rakesh, http://oemden.com/sixty-four-on-thirty-two-sfott/ this is where I got my bootable usb from, follow the instructions and you should get a perfect bootable Yosemite osx 10.0.0 osx,but please instal the fix that peterhaans posted before you update to 10..0.2 Hope all goes well for you.

Rakneesh, the main challenge you have is getting a copy of “Install Yosemite.app” to build your USB bootable drive. Since your Mac 1,1 is not allowed to get it from the App Store and you don’t have a compliant second computer that would be allowed to download Yosemite installer, you have to get it from one of the many torrents. Search “Install Yosemite.app torrent”. Then build the bootable drive as per “Guide for Installing Yosemite on a Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1”. Note we think you also need “PikeYoseFix.pkg”, linked just above, to subsequently get to 10.10.2. Go here for comprehensive discussion first. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1740775

Keith/Peter- thanks for your quick responses. will do both. Peter – I had access to a MacBook pro during which time I was reading these forums and had the ‘presence’ of mind to grab the “Install Yosemite.app’ . so I have that and PikeYoseFix.pkg saved up.
Am waiting for all the hardware pieces coming togather before embarking on this journey. will report back after being up. thx

Keith/Peter – sincere thanks for all the directions. i spent a total of probaly 4 hours to get a booting 10.2.2 on a MacPro1,1 up and running. the short of it is that i went down the SFOTT path 1st to see if that will do it (it looked relatively straightforwad in the video etc). When that didn’t work, i booted back into my SSD (which i had cloned from my HD). I started down the link that Peter had provided below and followed it line by line and viola! its working.
its amazing what SSD and Memory upgrades to in general for the machine BUT Yosmite is ‘singing’ on it right now. Will apply the fix for preventing the autoupdates clobbering the boot.efi in the AM..
Sincere thanks to this community for all your help. Charlie – thanks for running the blog!
Also will make that contribution in the am for Pike’s hardwork..
Hit me up with any questions if you have for my setup.

Ha. I can’t seriously believe it’s that easy. I’ve got folders full of research about upgrading my Mac Pro 1,1. I’ve tried all the installer stuff: hackintosh Chameleon, changing the board ids and Tiamo’s boot.efi and blessing this and that, and couldn’t get a boot. In the meantime, I had installed Yosemite on an external disk drive for my 2008 MacBook Pro 4,1, just to see what it looks life (wife doesn’t like changes in her cages, she’s got a 2013 27″ iMac and still whines about Eudora), and upgraded it to 10.10.2 and then I read your article. “Wha?” I mumbled. Anyway, I thought I’d tried that. So I swapped out the original boot.efi files (backed up of course ) for the Pike boot.black.efi, and rebooted with the drive attached to the Mac Pro, and up it came, nice black screen, nice blue desktop, latest version. Of course, I still have the original GeForce 7300 GT video card (and the original processors) so it doesn’t really work very well, but it works! Anyway, this is just say thanks for the extremely useful and straightforward and simple approach. What do you recommend for an affordable video card upgrade (I’ll probably never replace the processors — that’s kind of out of my pay grade)?

Thanks. I’ve got a couple of 5770s on my “watch list” on Ebay. Do I need a Mac flashed version? I don’t really care if I see a boot screen. I guess my next step is to clone my official boot drive with all my apps and files and so, and then upgrade that. Like I said, though, Yosemite won’t do me any good until I upgrade the video card. Thanks for the posts!

Re: video cards for MP1,1. As you probably know, the standard nVidia 7300 GT works well enough with 10.7.5 Lion, and although it will work with 10.10.2 Yosemite, it’s kinda ugly. I found an PC version of the XFX Radeon 5770 with 1024MB VRAM on my local Craigslist for $50. Using a guide I found on Google it was quite simple to flash the 5770, altho’ I haven’t been successful trying to flash other video cards that Google searches say are supposed to work. If you check around you’ll probably find that the PC versions of the 5770 are relatively cheap compared to the Mac versions of the same.

FWIW, I’m really happy with the quality of the 5770 with Yosemite on the MP1,1.

Peter – i got all the way to also dealing with the 10.10.2 fix and its all working (as i mentioned above). I however have a situation where on boot, i have a folder with a ? that blinks. And if left to continue , it goes into a ‘Recovery/Fresh install mode’.
However if i just hard boot the machine with the ALT/Option key pressed, i get a choice and i can choose my SSDBoot drive and then i can get into Yosemite without any issues…

anybody run into this post getting their MacPro(1,1) to Yosemite 10.10.12 and also the Pikescript package installed?

Thank you very much for this blog post. I was able to upgrade my Mac Pro 1,1 (2.66 GHz Xeon, 21GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5770) very smoothly in a couple of hours. I followed the directions in macrumors blog post – http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1740775 with the following steps

1) Restored to a USB flash drive the pre-patched Piker Alpha bootable Yosemite installer
2) Rebooted my machine from USB flash drive. This ran the Yosemite installation successfully with no issues
3) Once Yosemite was installed, I logged in and ran the PikeYoseFix script which forces you to reboot the machine
4) After reboot, I log into my machine and ran the Mac Software Update to install 10.10.2.
5) Yosemite 10.10.2 installed and rebooted my machine without any problem.

Just a clarification to my previous post, I ran this on my existing hard drive which had Snow Leopard installed and all my applications intact. Of course, before you do any installs, always backup your data.

Unfortunately, I’m having the worst time trying to simply restore to a USB flash drive.

1. I’ve tried following the Instructions through disk utility, 2. I’ve tried diskmaker (a software that automatically makes boot drives), and 3. I’ve tried terminal commands. In all three cases, I’ve gotten the response that the Piker Alpha installer is incomplete, unsuitable for installation or that it needs to be “image scanned”.

If you open Disk Utility, select the Image in the disk util sidebar, and click on Images > Scan for restore… in the menu bar, it will take care of it for you. After that you can perform a restore as you were trying to do.

How are you doing it now? My steips were as follows. :
1.download the piker bootloader.zip
2. Opened the zip file so it mounts the yosemite installer.dmg
3 .open disk utility and drag the yosemite installer.dmg into the lower left pane of the window.
4. choose Restore from the top right of the window
5. Drag yosemite installer into “source” and your usb drive into ” Destination”
6. Choose Restore in the lower right of the window.

I’ve been running 10.10.2 on a MacPro1,1 with 24GB RAM, a flashed XFX Radeon 5770 and a 256GB SSD for a month or so. The system appears to perform perfectly with only one exception that I’ve noticed so far: after a few days the Ethernet connection drops, and Network Preferences says that the cable is unplugged (which it is not). I then unplug that Ethernet cable and plug it in to the other Ethernet connection at the back of the MP1,1, and all is well, for a few days anyway. Then it happens again and I have to reboot to get Ethernet working. Weird.

BTW, I have fifteen or twenty systems connected by Ethernet to my home router, including PCs, Macs, Hackintoshes, Linux machines, etc., and none of them experience the issue described above.

If, after both of the integrated Ethernet devices en0 and en1 have failed on the MP1,1, I connect an Apple USB Ethernet device en2 using the same Ethernet cable, I instantly get Ethernet back.

Also, alternately, after both of the integrated Ethernet devices en0 and en1 have failed, I restart/reboot the MP1,1, and connect the same Ethernet cable to one or both of en0 or en1, I get Ethernet back as soon as the MP1,1 has finished restarting.

And to re-state what I said earlier, I have numerous devices, iMacs, MacMinis, three or four Hackintoshes, a couple of PCs, my wife’s MacBook Air, a couple of computers running Linux, none of which have ever exhibited this behaviour.

So I’m pretty certain the fault is on the OS X 10.10.2 software side, that is with the kext(s) on the MP1,1.

Very glad that I found your page! I was almost a day or two from giving this system away or putting it on the scrap heap. I decided to look around and found your page and now my system is running 10.10.2 just fine.

I run a MacPro1,1 with just 4GB of RAM, 5770 video, and 120Gb hard drive.

Thanks to all of you, I found the info here very enlightening and useful.

Hi All, Just had an email from Apple asking if I want to test drive The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Public Beta. Has anybody installed this yet on a Mac Pro 1.1? the PikerYoseFix is supposed to be okay with future updates to Yosemite, just wondered if this would be okay to install.

I ran into a wrinkle I hadn’t considered. As you know, just about any Nvidia graphics card will work with OS X 10.8 and above, but if it’s not flashed for a Mac EFI, you won’t see a “boot screen,” you won’t get a display until it’s actually booted. Well, fair enough. I thought I might put the old 7300 into slot 4, and use it at x8 (there’s a configuration for that). So I bought a cheap GT 610, passive, with a big sexy-looking heat sink, and I thought I could put it into slot 1 which is where it needs to go to get x16 speed. When it arrived, of course, I found that the mounting screws for the heat sink raise it enough (off the top of the memory cage) so that it won’t go into slot 1.

It works, and the Expansion Slot Utility finds it, but I need it in slot 1.

Oh darn. The Good News is that BestBuy are good about returns, and that it didn’t cost very much.

Anyone have problems with 3 or 4TB disks? i tried to add a 4TB SATA drive (samasung but really made by Seagate) and when i first had Yosemite format it with HFS etc – it looked fine. after a reboot – i am running into the dreaded “”unable to write to the last block of the device” error…

I have Mavericks installed since a while on my MacPro 1.1 with a Radeon 5770 (flashed), runs perfect (didn’t fixed iMessage yet, don’t need it).
Would like to update to Yosemite, should I try install it over Mavericks or should I do a fresh install (concerning the efi issue).

Another thing I have: the max resolution on the 5770 is 1280×1024 (running 2 identical 19″ monitors via DVI).
The strange thing is, my old G5 with a Radeon X1950 can drive via DVI the monitors at 1650.
Anyone an idea?

Just bought a inateck usb 3.0 KTU3FR-4P and it seems to work fine with Yosemite 10.10 but with 1 problem. When I installed it my system no longer recognizes the last bank of memory so now it only registers 3GB out of the 4GB. Once I get 2 sticks of 8GB I probably won’t have to worry but that will be a while. I’ve read its not recommended to use that last bank but how can I get around this problem?

Yes, but the update broke my 10.10.2 last night when I clicked on Update All in the App Store – ended up with a blinking blank folder on screen during the installation process.

I then booted up from another drive, unlocked the new boot.efi, replaced it with Pike’s boot.efi from a backup, changed the start up disk back to the main HD and the updater picked up from where it was left and completed the update.

I have 10.10.2 on my Mac Pro 1.1 running fine.
Installation of 10.10 using the excellent pre-patched Piker-Alpha bootable yosemite installer followed by installing PikeYoseFix. Update to 10.2 painless, but had reservations about the 10.3 update. Looks like I will just have to give it a go.
Was planning on using target mode to reinstall the boot.efi if things went bad. If boot not possible, would either use my recovery drive or put in my old OS HD in to reinstall the new boot.efi .

I too had 10.10.2 with Pikes efi installed on my Mac Pro 1,1 2006 and went ahead with the 10.10.3 update. Like you, I found things didn’t go according to plan. Then I found your comment and replaced boot.efi – bingo, works a treat.

FYI – because I haven’t read this anywhere in here…
I upgraded my Mac Pro 1,1 (flashed it so it now thinks it’s a 2,1 model) also:
32GB memory
3 internal 1 TB drives (left one bay open for eventual SSD)
swapped out stock video card for a NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 1024 MB
Pike’s .efi bootloader (with script for shutdown overwrite)
and all is well in the world!

One exception… Can’t get anything to show up under “displays” in system preferences? It reads the correct video card under “about this mac” and I don’t see any performance issues. Just wondered if anyone else had this issue? Also, has anyone updated their MP 1,1 to El Capitan yet? If so, anything we need to know?

Can anyone please give DETAILED STEP BT STEP INSTRUCTIONS on how to install Yosemite 10.10.3 on my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 from Lion OS. Have a 5770 video card installed to use FCPX and Photoshop on my two 30″ Cinema Displays. I have a spare 750 Gb HD to use as the Yosemite HD. I have a 2013 Mac Book Pro, full upgraded too, if that helps the process any. I am not savvy with changingTerminal commands and such. Sorry but I need handholding to get this to work. So many posts out there about this topic, it is confusing. HELP, someone?

Installing Yosemite using the prepatched version that can be found here: https://mega.co.nz/#!SoAgnKqI!GUinePUGF3jAAu3oUym-GHBC9doWRTU1p6nnkXkJFdQ
with the instructions that can be found here:http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-yosemite.1740775/
Should do you.
It is essentially a standard install, the patched version includes the alterations to the boot.efi so you do not have to do any terminal jiggery pokery. They you install the pikeYoseFix script (as mentioned on the instructions web page) which ensures the patched boot.fi is reloaded every time the computer reboots so an update that overwrites it does not break the machine.
This advice comes with no guarantees of course, each system is made unique by its owner and all modifications are undertaken at your own risk. Back up all essential data before modification is always recommended.
It worked fine for me however.

So in theory, if I’m at 10.10.2 and I run any of the Apple Software updates, all I would have to do if it doesn’t reboot properly is boot to another drive where I could access the file structure and replace that boot.efi?

A fresh install is one thing, but I’m trying to lock down a procedure for the incremental updates.

Here is what I did. Step by step and it worked 1st try
1.download the piker bootloader.zip
2. Opened the zip file so it mounts the yosemite installer.dmg
3 .open disk utility and drag the yosemite installer.dmg into the lower left pane of the window.
4. choose Restore from the top right of the window
5. Drag yosemite installer into “source” and your usb drive into ” Destination”
6. Choose Restore in the lower right of the window.

I’ve tried 10.10.4 and it breaks my install – can’t find startup disk. When I reload using bootable USB, I get it back to pre install with my data intact. However,as I am running this as a server, the server components don’t work now until the update is done, when I do the update, it breaks……it updated previous versions of Yosemite fine, so not sure what is going on here.

Like others, I have tried to install 10.10.4 on a Mac Pro 1,1 with no success. It ran fine with 10.10.3 and I mistakenly ran the update on from the app store as opposed to updating from my Macbook Pro with the MP in target disk mode – temporary loss of sanity. But now I have tried to do a clean install on the MP with no success. Does the latest version of Pike’s boot.efi work on a MP 1,1?. I’m hoping I am just missing something but nothing is working – ugh… Thanks if anyone has some experience with 10.10.4 on a MP 1,1 or 2,1 (I have 3 of these machines that all worked in 10.10.3 but am hesitant to upgrade the 2,1’s until I get this resolved. Thanks everyone!!

All is well from the above issue – the hard drive had failed. It would show up and even boot another computer in TDM, but when the 1,1 would boot it would not recognize the SSD. New SSD – 10.10.4 running like a charm on a Mac Pro 1,1! Great site for all my questions – thank you!

I don’t have a Yosemite CD or disk image, but using a Mac Laptop running Yosemite 10.10.? and booting my Mac into Target Disk Mode, I installed Yosemite on a hard disk partition via the network/internet. Then I ran PikeYoseFix and tried to boot several times without success. I have even tried replacing the boot.efi in its different locations
usr/stanalone/i386 and
System/Library/CoreServices

If I need a new graphics card, please suggest one with instructions on getting it to work, i.e. flashing its ROM.

Graphics cards are a problem as the standard cards provided with the original 1.1 are incompatible with the upgrades requiring the modified boot.efi.
I got the ATI Radion 5770, there are 2 ways of going about this. A Mac version (more expensive), or to flash a Windows version (cheaper but more work). Mac is plug and play, I have not tried to flash the GPU and so cannot help there, but there are instructions available on the net.

Currently running 10.10.4 on MP 1.1 with Evo 850 SSD boot drive. So far upgrades not a problem using PikeYose Fix – no problems noted. However, has anyone tried upgrading to .5? Does the impending security changes to kexts cause a problem?

I guess it depends upon what you are running, and how you define “usable”. I have the 2 x 2.66 dual cores, 14Gb RAM and the 5770 GPU running 3 x 27″ screens at a reasonable speed for general use, transcoding 1080p is not fast but tolerable, not tried 4K yet.

Yeah My Mac Pro Is Slow. I Mean When I Drag An App Or Open One. It Takes Like 30 Seconds To Respond. When I Click Anything It Takes 30 Seconds To Respond. What Method Did You Use To Install Yosemite And Are You Using The PikeYose Script?

I am currently not monitoring temps, but if memory serves CPU ran around 80 – 120 F, Some RAM modules got up to 176 F until I increased the fan. No impact upon stability I could detect.
I have also used at times Techtools Pro, Drive Genius and Diskwarrior to keep things ticking over and deal with problems (tech tools is good for rebuilding volumes and Diskwarrior has made accessible corrupt drives when everything else has failed), but since upgrading to an SSD not so much.

Not sure I fully understand what you are implying. You need the advanced graphics card for the modified boot.efi to work. An older graphics card does not add anything unless you are running more than 3 screens. Cards such as the 5770 must be in slot 1 as the PCI slots in the 1.1 are not all the same (check the specs for your model). Since you can run 3 screens of one 5770, what are you running that requires the addition of an older card and why would you want an older card instead of the newer one?

They Say The GTX 600 Series Will Will Because Mountain Lion And Above Have Supported Drivers. I Got It Because It Was Cheap. And The Only Problem With Using Non-Flashed Cards Is You Don’t See Boot Screen. Ive Seen People Using The GTX 560 & 570 In Lots Of Youtube Videos. Im Gonna Do A Clean Install And See If That Works.

Hello Mac gang, I am having trouble with this upgrade. I have a 2.1 Mac Pro 8 Core 3.0Ghz. machine with an Apple 5770 and 8 gigs of ram. I feel comfortable with all this but just having trouble making my usb boot drive. I have already made a good working Yosemite USB stick and used it several times to install on other macs. I am good with disc utility as well. I downloaded the efi files and have not found anywhere the instructions on how to install or change the efi code ? I also downloaded the boot loader master but there was no zip file and nothing would work when I tried to put the files or whole folder into the disc utility ? Please help as I have spent 2 days searching and reading different sites including macrumors.

Is a better graphics card really required or is the sole reason for that the having of a boot screen?
I could care less about not having a boot screen if the rest works.
My Mac Pro 1,1 still has it’s original video card.
Or is there something else that will break unless I upgrade the card?

Glad I found this page. Did the piker-alpha disk utility route and installed Yosemite onto a Samsung EVO 850 SDD (128GB).

Notes
– yosefix script installed
– Gigabyte Nvidia Ge Force 750Ti does NOT work at all so I threw into my Dell T7500. The nvidia Quadro FX 3800 from my Dell T7500 actually works with dual display (dual Dell U2410 1920×1200) (3rd display port does not work on video card)
– nvidia web drivers.
– display 1 is DVI , display 2 is displayport. I’ll probably be upgrading the video card in a bit as I would like to try some video editing and need a card with lots of CUDA cores

I’ve been searching for days with no luck and hope some one here can give me an answer….if i upgrade my mac 1,1 like im supposed to could i run newer versions of programs like pro tools 12 or will it only run stuff that my original OS (lion) could run? I assume it could but im not that tech savy. Thanks for any info you can give me, much appreciated!

Does anyone know how to install snow leopard after the 5,1 firmware? If i do this i want to make sure i can re-install snow leopard at some point. Even if i have an image i can setup to restore snow leopard. Because my single 4,1 came with an older 10.6 snow leopard and apparently i would have to get a retail 10.6.4 special build and modify the plist. Well at least that’s what i read on another post. It sure would be nice to know how to downgrade after the firmware and chip change. Because I wasn’t planning on putting the w3520 back in just to downgrade the firmware for snow leopard.